Four Reasons Why Compliance and Documentation are a DC’s Best Friend

Compliance and documentation can be a pain for a practice. With a constant barrage of new, more stringent regulations and an ever-increasing number of requirements becoming necessary to ensure proper payments, it can seem like more of a drag on practice resources than a benefit to future profits. But on the flip side of the coin, these requirements offer support to the DC and provide more benefits than meet the eye. Here are four ways that compliance and documentation can be seen as practice assets instead of perceived liabilities.

1. Improved Outcomes

Proper documentation is vital to the health of the chiropractic business, and each practice relies on it. Providers are important record-keepers of the medical histories of their patients and each DC has a duty to correctly record and transmit accurate data to with regards to their patients, alternate providers, and the industry at large. But most importantly, the ability to properly document and record courses of care and outcomes leads to the improvement of chiropractic care as a whole. Better coding and documentation produces a better understanding of treatment outcomes and a firmer grasp of which chiropractic courses of care lead to the most favorable outcomes.

2. Improved Perception of Chiropractic

Documentation and compliance builds data. This data that the chiropractic industry produces is a reflection of the profession, and it deeply affects its overall reputation. Good documentation and compliance creates clean data that can be used to validate treatment plans and defend courses of care. Through the smallest changes in documentation practices can come big changes in the perception of chiropractic. Every data-driven, evidence-based treatment and verified outcome is a nail in the coffin of skeptics and a stronger hold on chiropractic’s rightful position within the medical community.

3. Improved Payer Returns

Payers are persnickety, and although the ropes of compliance and documentation seem to be ever-tightening, they are also perfecting the payment model and providing better, more reliable payments for services rendered. The better assessment of the benefits of care and supportive data means that both payers and providers understand what to bill and what to pay. This streamlines the coding and billing process and increases the confidence of parties on both sides of the fence. With authenticated treatment options (validated directly by way of better documentation) providers and payers can have the confidence in each other to bill and pay for services more reliably.

4. Improved Practice Productivity

Internal efficiencies play a major role in the satisfaction of patients and the productivity of a practice. New mandates have required more robust technological baselines for EHR software that offers the chiropractic practice more efficient and foolproof documentation and compliance strategies with which to grow a highly profitable practice. With well-equipped EHR systems that automate compliance and help DCs construct complete and accurate documentation to get the reliable returns they deserve, practices can become clean-burning machines. By maximizing efficiency through a supporting technology, every DC can harvest the bountiful rewards of successfully managing their practice through streamlined compliance and documentation methods.

All of this red tape and these stringent rules are not for naught. Requirements are meant to improve chiropractor-insurer relationships, help build faithful bonds between provider and patient, support the industry, and streamline the practice. Compliance and documentation are gathering an increasing amount of attention from the medical industry, and this attention is creating a truly positive and impactful new face of chiropractic medicine, from the ground on up.